In one hand, an oat latte. In the other, a phone with social feeds full of doom-scroll posts about the end of the world.
Across Britain, a quiet transformation is happening. It’s not the stereotype of survivalist preppers hoarding beans in bunkers. It’s middle-class professionals – scientists, sustainability experts, teachers, doctors, policy analysts and management consultants who have seen the data and come to a stark conclusion: the systems we rely on for survival are far more fragile than they appear, are deeply flawed and contain within them dynamics that keep us locked in to a dangerous trajectory.
Some are voicing this quite openly, joining local groups to affect change and learn how to adapt; others have gone as far as to be a part of Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain or Just Stop Oil but are no longer active, waiting for the next big thing to come around; whilst many, many more have read the same writing on the wall but stay completely silent.
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Tipping Point
It strikes me that we are now at a crucial tipping point where a large number of people have been activated to the dire state of things when it comes to our many crises and challenges but whose behaviours are not commensurate with their understanding.
And to be honest, I think this group is larger than we think (I’m very much looking forward to this group being sized by quantitative research scheduled by The Climate Majority Project) and that most of you on LinkedIn, may well be a part to some degree.
Like the Partner at the accountancy firm I spoke to who has an MPhys from Oxford, lives in suburbia and would never dare mention climate change or social collapse to his friends or family but who has read the IPCC reports (no mean feat as they run into 1000s of pages), secretly follows JSO on X and whose heart is breaking at the thought of the 3 degree warmer world the physics tells him is coming.
Read more: LinkedIn